Mobile devices have changed the process of identification, providing a more secure and convenient communication platform to authorize payments, board a plane, access information, access buildings, provide identification to others around us, and so on. Mobile devices serve as an improvement upon traditional RFID enabled identification, employee badges, access cards and payment cards.
Traditional building systems that use a dedicated RFID door reader infrastructure are not easily upgraded. For many companies that lease their facilities, these companies typically do not own the building access system and cannot upgrade the RFID door reader quickly or in a cost-effective manner. Most corporate and government building systems use RFID technology which is not easily upgraded to accommodate the use of a mobile device for secure physical access. In fact, many mobile phone vendors have implemented restrictions which prevent or restrict the use of mobile devices from being used as RFID replacement solutions. Some mobile devices simply lack the prerequisite technology to be RFID capable. Consequently, the advancements of mobile phones are not being fully utilized by traditional building systems. The present invention serves to securely enable traditional RFID door readers to interface with a wide range of mobile devices. The present invention also simplifies the communication between mobile devices and traditional RFID readers, thereby serving as a replacement or supplementation of traditional RFID cards. The present invention utilizes mobile devices and traditional RFID readers that are able to communicate with each other via a translating adapter. The translating adapter is a sticker that is mountable onto a variety of RFID readers that enables mobile devices to interface with traditional RFID readers where the mobile devices and the readers would otherwise be incompatible.
This invention is not limited to physical access door readers, but applies equally to any RFID reader such as Point of Sales contactless readers, ISO14443 Contactless computer readers, USB based multifunction printer RFID readers or any reader that employs 125 kHz or 13.56 MHz RFID contactless communication. In the case of the Point of Sale terminal with NFC technology, it requires that an RFID credit card be presented to it for authorization of payment. This current approach does not support mobile devices which are incompatible with NFC, do not possess the required RFID technology or are limited by the manufacturer from using the mobile device RFID hardware for this purpose. Further it requires devices with NFC to be presented to the NFC reader in very close range, generally less than 10 cm.
This invention enables a mobile device to communicate over a Bluetooth radio frequency to the translating device at longer distances. The translating device converts the Bluetooth communication into an RFID protocol which is understood by the Point of Sale NFC terminal such as ISO14443 with an ISO7816 data structure, thus fully emulating a contactless credit card used by Visa, Mastercard and American Express and alike. The same approach is taken for NFC and 125 khz ticketing systems whereby a mobile device can communicate over Bluetooth through the translating device which converts the mobile devices credential into a format that is understood by the ticketing systems RFID reader; this can include protocols such as MiFare, Desfire and other ISO14443 and ISO15693 application protocols.
The concept of translating devices or gateways is not new; the novelty of this translating invention is its ability to draw 100% of its power from a host low energy RFID field that outputs as low as 0.5 mA of energy and use this energy in extremely power efficient ways to power medium range radio communication with a mobile device which stores and emulates multiple credentials from a single portable computer device. Further, by employing modern public private key technology for over the air transactions the strength of the communication is far superior to the legacy card systems that the solution is replacing. One specific challenge of the invention was solving the simultaneous communication between the translating device and the host RFID reader while power harvesting from the same antenna. A further challenge is being able to regulate power harvesting while the host RFID reader is attempting to communicate with traditional RFID cards in the same field. This challenge proved especially difficult given the power needs of traditional RFID cards and the interference caused by power harvesting circuits on the translating device. Ultimately, this challenge was solved with the introduction of a wave form detection circuit that detects and determines when a card may be entering the field, allowing the translating device to adjust its power consumption through a variable control circuit.